Congo Read online

  The news gave Elliot serious misgivings. The expedition was taking yet another turn, into still greater danger. His immediate desire to back out was checked by his memory of the video screen, and the gray gorilla like creature that he suspected was a new, unknown animal. That was a discovery worth risk. He stared out the window at the porters. “They’re Kikuyu?”

  “Yes,” she said. “They’re good porters, even if they never shut up. Kikuyu tribesmen love to talk. They’re all brothers, by the way, so be careful what you say. I just hope Munro didn’t have to tell them too much.”

  “The Kikuyu?”

  “No, the NCNA.”

  “The NCNA,” Elliot repeated.

  “The Chinese. The Chinese are very interested in computers and electronic technology,” Ross said. “Munro must be telling them something in exchange for the advice they’re giving him.” She gestured to the window, and Elliot looked out. Sure enough, Munro stood under the shadow of the 747 wing, talking with four Chinese men.

  “Here,” Ross said, “stow these in that corner.” She pointed to three large Styrofoam cartons marked AMERICAN SPORT DIVERS, LAKE ELSINORE, CALIF.

  “We doing underwater work?” Elliot asked, puzzled.

  But Ross wasn’t paying attention. “I just wish I knew what he was telling them,” she said. But as it turned out, Ross needn’t have worried, for Munro paid the Chinese in something more valuable to them than electronics information.

  The Fokker lifted off from the Nairobi runway at 14:24 hours, three minutes ahead of their new timeline schedule.

  During the sixteen hours following Amy’s recovery, the ERTS expedition traveled 560 miles across the borders of four countries—Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Zaire—as they went from Nairobi to the Barawana Forest, at the edge of the Congo rain forest. The logistics of this complex move would have been impossible without the assistance of an outside ally. Munro said that he “had friends in low places,” and in this case he had turned to the Chinese Secret Service, in Tanzania.

  The Chinese had been active in Africa since the early 1960s, when their spy networks attempted to influence the course of the Congolese civil war because China wanted access to the Congo’s rich supplies of uranium. Field operatives were run out of the Bank of China or, more commonly, the New China News Agency. Munro had dealt with a number of NCNA “war correspondents” when he was running arms from 1963 to 1968, and he had never lost his contacts.

  The Chinese financial commitment to Africa was considerable. In the late 1960s, more than half of China’s two billion dollars in foreign aid went to African nations. An equal sum was spent secretly; in 1973, Mao Tse-tung complained publicly about the money he had wasted trying to overthrow the Zaire government of President Mobutu.

  The Chinese mission in Africa was meant to counter the Russian influence, but since World War lithe Chinese bore no great love for the Japanese, and Munro’s desire to beat the Euro-Japanese consortium fell on sympathetic ears. To celebrate the alliance, Munro had brought three grease-stained cardboard cartons from Hong Kong.

  The two chief Chinese operatives in Africa, Li T’ao and Liu Shu-wen, were both from Hunan province. They found their African posting tedious because of the bland African food, and gratefully accepted Munro’s gift of a case of tree ears fungus, a case of hot bean sauce, and a case of chili paste with garlic. The fact that these spices came from neutral Hong Kong, and were not the inferior condiments produced in Taiwan, was a subtle point; in any case, the gift struck exactly the proper note for an informal exchange.

  NCNA operatives assisted Munro with paperwork, some difficult-to-obtain equipment, and information. The Chinese possessed excellent maps, and remarkably detailed information about conditions along the northeast Zaire border— since they were assisting the Tanzanian troops invading Uganda. The Chinese had told him that the jungle rivers were flooding, and had advised him to procure a balloon for crossings. But Munro did not bother to take their advice; indeed, he seemed to have some plan to reach his destination without crossing any rivers at all. Although how, the Chinese could not imagine.

  At 10 P.M. on June 16, the Fokker stopped to refuel at Rawamagena airport, outside Kigali in Rwanda. The local traffic control officer boarded the plane with a clipboard and forms, asking their next destination. Munro said that it was Rawamagena airport, meaning that the aircraft would make a loop, then return.

  Elliot frowned. “But we’re going to land somewhere in the—”

  “Sh-h-h,” Ross said, shaking her head. “Leave it alone.”

  Certainly the traffic officer seemed content with this flight plan; once the pilot signed the clipboard, he departed. Ross explained that flight controllers in Rwanda were accustomed to aircraft that did not file full plans. “He just wants to know when the plane will be back at his field. The rest is none of his business.”

  Rawamagena airport was sleepy; they had to wait two hours for petrol to be brought, yet the normally impatient Ross waited quietly. And Munro dozed, equally indifferent to the delay.

  “What about the timeline?” Elliot asked.

  “No problem,” she said. “We can’t leave for three hours anyway. We need the light over Mukenko.”

  “That’s where the airfield is?” Elliot asked.

  “If you call it an airfield,” Munro said, and he pulled his safari hat down over his eyes and went back to sleep.

  This worried Elliot until Ross explained to him that most outlying African airfields were just dirt strips cut into the bush. The pilots couldn’t land at night, or in the foggy morning, because there were often animals on the field, or encamped nomads, or another plane that had put down and was unable to take off again. “We need the light,” she explained. “That’s why we’re waiting. Don’t worry: it’s all factored in.”

  Elliot accepted her explanation, and went back to check on Amy. Ross sighed. “Don’t you think we’d better tell him?” she asked.

  “Why?” Munro said, not lifting his hat.

  “Maybe there’s a problem with Amy.”

  “I’ll take care of Amy,” Munro said.

  “It’s going to upset Elliot when he finds out,” Ross said.

  “Of course it’s going to upset him,” Munro said. “But there’s no point upsetting him until we have to. After all, what’s this jump worth to us?”

  “Forty hours, at least. It’s dangerous, but it’ll give us a whole new timeline. We could still beat them.”

  “Well, there’s your answer,” Munro said. “Now keep your mouth shut, and get some rest.”

  DAY 5: MORUTI

  June 17,1979

  1. Zaire

  FIVE HOURS OUT OF RAWAMAGENA, THE LANDSCAPE changed. Once past Goma, near the Zaire border, they found themselves flying over the easternmost fingers of the Congo rain forest. Elliot stared out the window, fascinated.

  Here and there in the pale morning light, a few fragile wisps of fog clung like cotton to the canopy of trees. And occasionally they passed the dark snaking curve of a muddy river, or the straight deep red gash of a road. But for the most part they looked down upon an unbroken expanse of dense forest, extending away into the distance as far as the eye could see.

  The view was boring, and simultaneously frightening—it was frightening to be confronted by what Stanley had called “the indifferent immensity of the natural world.” As one sat in the air-conditioned comfort of an airplane seat, it was impossible not to recognize that this vast, monotonous forest was a giant creation of nature, utterly dwarfing in scale the greatest cities or other creations of mankind. Each individual green puff of a tree had a trunk forty feet in diameter, soaring two hundred feet into the air; a space the size of a Gothic cathedral was concealed beneath its billowing foliage. And Elliot knew that the forest extended to the west for nearly two thousand miles, until it finally stopped at the Atlantic Ocean, on the west coast of Zaire.

  Elliot had been anticipating Amy’s reaction to this first view of the jungle, her natural environment. She loo
ked out the window with a fixed stare. She signed Here jungle with the same emotional neutrality that she named color cards, or objects spread out on her trailer floor in San Francisco. She was identifying the jungle, giving a name to what she saw, but he sensed no deeper recognition.

  Elliot said to her, “Amy like jungle?”

  Jungle here, she signed. Jungle is.

  He persisted, probing for the emotional context that he was sure must be there. Amy like jungle?

  Jungle here. Jungle is. Jungle place here Amy see jungle here.

  He tried another approach. “Amy live jungle here?”

  No. Expressionless.

  “Where Amy live?”

  Amy live Amy house. Referring to her trailer in San Francisco.

  Elliot watched her loosen her seat belt, cup her chin on her hand as she stared lazily out the window. She signed, Amy want cigarette.

  She had noticed Munro smoking.

  “Later, Amy,” Elliot said.

  At seven in the morning, they flew over the shimmering metal roofs of the tin and tantalum mining complex at Mas­isi. Munro, Kahega, and the other porters went to the back of the plane, where they worked on the equipment, chattering excitedly in Swahili.

  Amy, seeing them go, signed, They worried.

  “Worried about what, Amy?”

  They worried men worry they worried problems. After a while, Elliot moved to the rear of the plane to find Munro’s men half buried under great heaps of straw, stuffing equipment into oblong torpedo-shaped muslin containers, then packing straw around the supplies. Elliot pointed to the muslin torpedoes. “What are these?”

  “They’re called Crosslin containers,” Munro said. “Very reliable.”

  “I’ve never seen equipment packed this way,” Elliot said, watching the men work. “They seem to be protecting our supplies very carefully.”

  “That’s the idea,” Munro said. And he moved up the aircraft to the cockpit, to confer with the pilot.

  Amy signed, Nosehair man lie Peter. “Nosehair man” was her term for Munro, but Elliot ignored her. He turned to Kahega. “How far to the airfield?”

  Kahega glanced up. “Airfield?”

  “At Mukenko.”

  Kahega paused, thinking it over. “Two hours,” he said. And then he giggled. He said something in Swahili and all his brothers laughed, too.

  “What’s funny?” Elliot said.

  “Oh, Doctor,” Kahega said, slapping him on the back. “You are humorous by your nature.”

  The airplane banked, making a slow wide circle in the air. Kahega and his brothers peered out the windows, and Elliot joined them. He saw only unbroken jungle—and then a column of green jeeps, moving down a muddy track far below. It looked like a military formation. He heard the word “Muguru” repeated several times.

  “What’s the matter?” Elliot said. “Is this Muguru?”

  Kahega shook his head vigorously. “No hell. This damn pilot, I warn Captain Munro, this damn pilot lost.”

  “Lost?” Elliot repeated. Even the word was chilling.

  Kahega laughed. “Captain Munro set him right, give him dickens.”

  The airplane now flew east, away from the jungle toward a wooded highland area, rolling hills and stands of deciduous trees. Kahega’s brothers chattered excitedly, and laughed and slapped one another; they seemed to be having a fine time.

  Then Ross came back, moving quickly down the aisle, her face tense. She unpacked cardboard boxes, withdrawing several basketball-sized spheres of tightly wrapped metal foil.

  The foil reminded him of Christmas-tree tinsel. “What’s that for?” Elliot asked.

  And then he heard the first explosion, and the Fokker shuddered in the air.

  Running to the window, he saw a straight thin white vapor trail terminating in a black smoke cloud off to their right. The Fokker was banking, tilting toward the jungle. As he watched, a second trail streaked up toward them from the green forest below.

  It was a missile, he realized. A guided missile.

  “Ross!” Munro shouted.

  “Ready!” Ross shouted back.

  There was a bursting red explosion, and his view through the windows was obscured by dense smoke, The airplane shook with the blast, but continued the turn. Elliot couldn’t believe it: someone was shooting missiles at them.

  “Radar!” Munro shouted. “Not optical! Radar!”

  Ross gathered up the silver basketballs in her arms and moved back down the aisle. Kahega was opening the rear door, the wind whipping through the compartment.

  “What the hell’s happening?” Elliot said.

  “Don’t worry,” Ross said over her shoulder. “We’ll make up the time.” There was a loud whoosh, followed by a third explosion. With the airplane still banked steeply, Ross tore the wrappings from the basketballs and threw them out into the open sky.

  Engines roaring, the Fokker swung eight miles to the south and climbed to twelve thousand feet, then circled the forest in a holding pattern. With each revolution, Elliot could see the foil strips hanging in the air like a glinting metallic cloud. Two more rockets exploded within the cloud. Even from a distance, the noise and the shock waves disturbed Amy; she was rocking back and forth in her seat, grunting softly.

  “That’s chaff,” Ross explained, sitting in front of her portable computer console, pushing keys. “It confuses radar weapons systems. Those radar-guided SAMs read us as somewhere in the cloud.”

  Elliot heard her words slowly, as if in a dream. It made no sense to him. “But who’s shooting at us?”

  “Probably the FZA,” Munro said. “Forces Zairoises Ar­moises—the Zaire army.”

  “The Zaire army? Why?”

  “It’s a mistake,” Ross said, still punching buttons, not looking up.

  “A mistake? They’re shooting surface-to-air missiles at us and it’s a mistake? Don’t you think you’d better call them and tell them it’s a mistake?”

  “Can’t,” Ross said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” Munro said, “we didn’t want to file a flight plan in Rawamagena. That means we are technically in violation of Zaire airspace.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Elliot said.

  Ross said nothing. She continued to work at the computer console, trying to get the static to resolve on the screen, pressing one key after another.

  “When I agreed to join this expedition,” Elliot said, beginning to shout, “I didn’t expect to get into a shooting war.”

  “Neither did I,” Ross said. “It looks as if we both got more than we bargained for.”

  Before Elliot could reply, Munro put an arm around his shoulder and took him aside. “It’s going to be all right,” he told Elliot. “They’re outdated sixties SAMs and most of them are blowing up because the solid propellant’s cracked with age. We’re in no danger. Just look after Amy, she needs your help now. Let me work with Ross.”

  Ross was under intense pressure. With the airplane circling eight miles from the chaff cloud, she had to make a decision quickly. But she had just been dealt a devastating— and wholly unexpected—setback.

  The Euro-Japanese consortium had been ahead of them from the very start, by approximately eighteen hours and twenty minutes. On the ground in Nairobi, Munro had worked out a plan with Ross which would erase that difference and put the ERTS expedition on-site forty hours ahead of the consortium team. This plan—which for obvious reasons she had not told Elliot—called for them to parachute onto the barren southern slopes of Mount Mukenko.

  From Mukenko, Munro estimated it was thirty-six hours to the ruined city; Ross expected to jump at two o’clock that afternoon. Depending on cloud cover over Mukenko and the specific drop zone, they might reach the city as early as noon on June 19.

  The plan was extremely hazardous. They would be jumping untrained personnel into a wilderness area, more than three days’ walk from the nearest large town. If anyone suffered a serious injury, the chances of survival were slight. There was als
o a question about the equipment: at altitudes of 8,000—10,000 feet on the volcanic slopes, air resistance was reduced, and the Crosslin packets might not provide enough protection.

  Initially Ross had rejected Munro’s plan as too risky, but he convinced her it was feasible. He pointed out that the parafoils were equipped with automated altimeter-release devices; that the upper volcanic scree was as yielding as a sandy beach; that the Crosslin containers could be over-packed; and that he could carry Amy down himself.

  Ross had double-checked outcome probabilities from the Houston computer, and the results were unequivocal. The probability of a successful jump was .7980, meaning there was one chance in five that someone would be badly hurt. However, given a successful jump, the probability of expedition success was .9934, making it virtually certain they would beat the consortium to the site.

  No alternate plan scored so high. She had looked at the data and said, “I guess we jump.”

  “I think we do,” Munro had said.

  The jump solved many problems, for the geopolitical updates were increasingly unfavorable. The Kigani were now in full rebellion; the pygmies were unstable; the Zaire army had sent armored units into the eastern border area to put down the Kigani—and African field armies were notoriously trigger-happy. By jumping onto Mukenko, they expected to bypass all these hazards.

  But that was before the Zaire army SAMs began exploding all around them. They were still eighty miles south of the intended drop zone, circling over Kigani territory, wasting time and fuel. It looked as if their daring plan, so carefully worked out and confirmed by computer, was suddenly irrelevant.

  And to add to her difficulties, she could not confer with Houston; the computer refused to link up by satellite. She spent fifteen minutes working with the portable unit, boosting power and switching scrambler codes, until she finally realized that her transmission was being electronically jammed.